Cubs follow script as season ends
07.10.2007 03:00
Sport and Travel
- Source: USA Today
CHICAGO — Alas, the Cubs. What is there to say? This demise was so ... Cubsian.
It is official now. The World Series drought is 99 years, and the last title remains 1908. Arizona wasn't even a STATE then. Now, of course, Arizona has a team in the National League Championship Series, the Diamondbacks stepping over the Cubs' dead bats and dead chances 5-1 Saturday night to get there. This was the postseason in all its ruthlessness. Six months of grinding it takes to get to this point, and then everything is gone in four days. Someone had to be the first team evicted from October. Might as well be the Cubs. And didn't it seem just like their history, when the disappointments always come with a little extra knee to the stomach? "I thought we had every ingredient possible," Cliff Floyd said. "We felt like we were going to go a long way. There's going to be some tough days ahead putting this away. "We picked a bad time to play bad baseball." • Only the Cubs ... On this win-or-go-home night, the Diamondbacks scored five runs. The Cubs hit into four double plays. • Only the Cubs ... A team is usually on an offensive tear when it sweeps a series. The Cubs were just swept by an opponent that went a horrendous 4-for-31 with runners in scoring position. A team that left nine men on base in the first five innings Saturday night, just begging to be caught. Of course, so did Chicago. • Only the Cubs ... They had talked and hoped for two days that Wrigley Field would make all the difference. The series would change with the first pitch at 5:06 p.m. local time. At 5:06 p.m., Chris Young hit the first pitch of the game into the left field bleachers for a lead Arizona would never lose. • Only the Cubs ... There were times Arizona starter Livan Hernandez needed a divining stick to find home plate. He walked five batters in the first five innings, and hit another. A pitcher normally pays for that. But the Cubs could only score one run. Aramis Ramirez, who had an awful 0-for-12 series, bounced into a double play in the third with runners on first and second. So in the fifth, when he actually walked to load the bases, the Wrigley Field fans answered with a roar. The home team's moment had finally come. Mark DeRosa then grounded into a double play. He reached base every other at-bat, by the way. • Only the Cubs ... They stormed past Milwaukee to the division title with the thunder from Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee and Ramirez. Combined production: 81 home runs, 253 RBI. In three games against the Diamondbacks: No RBI, no home runs, three hits in 38 at-bats. A .079 average. Soriano had 14 home runs in September alone. He didn't have a hit in 14 at-bats in the playoffs. "We didn't play like we're supposed to play," Soriano said. "We tried too hard and we tried too much." "There are certain times you have to show up," Lee said. "If you don't, you go pack. I certainly learned that." They had hoped coming home would somehow give them new life. "We have an extra player on our team when we're at Wrigley," Ryan Theriot said before the game. But the ivy can't pitch and the throngs who sit on the rooftop boxes across the street can't hit. The Cubs went from the bottom of the division to the top this season, and that ought to count for something. But the last chapter is what gets remembered most, fairly or not. Chicago's summer ended in boos. "It's going to be a long winter," Lee said. Wrigley Field had its usual charm, its usual result and its usual final plaintive cry late Saturday night. Maybe next year. Since 1908, always next year.
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